Students Go “Old School” with Special Minaret Edition

This past week, several editors of UT’s student newspaper, The Minaret, unplugged from their computers, shut off their digital cameras and produced a special section of the paper without the use of modern technology.

“After setting up the equipment and transforming the second-floor women’s restroom in Vaughn into a makeshift darkroom, we began to type up our handwritten stories on typewriters that, by the looks of things, may have been used by my great grandfather,” writes Chelsea Daubar ’15, a journalism major and assistant news editor, in her story that appears in this week’s Minaret.

“After the grueling process of copy editing by hand and retyping every story again and again until it was perfect, we put each story into columns,” she continues. “Now, when I’ve done this before, it’s been a very simple process: Click the box tool, drag it out, copy, paste and voila! Columns. But that’s not how it worked in the olden days.”

Instead, Daubar and her colleagues had to use typewriters, rubber cement, X-Acto knives and film cameras to produce a four-page section.

UT’s Minaret was only the second student publication to participate in the challenge, called “All on Paper,” which was sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists. Minaret staffers were mentored by three students from Florida Atlantic University who participated in “All on Paper” last year.

“It is aimed as a memorable, experiential learning opportunity for students, in part to show them firsthand how news production used to be and how much impact digital tools have had on the process,” said Dan Reimold, assistant professor of journalism and faculty adviser for The Minaret.

Reimold said participation in this program builds on several national honors that the paper has earned for its website and magazine this academic year. Most prominently, he said, it received a Pacemaker Award for its website from the Associated Collegiate Press, the largest and oldest U.S. student journalism organization.